Giving Great Presentations

If you are serious about presenting (and I reckon everybody should be) then you will find this presentation from TechEd 2011 very interesting/useful. It was given by Mark Russinovich and Mark Minasi who are very experienced Microsoft speakers.

They make all the sensible points about presentations that seem like common sense; know your stuff, practice your demos, engage the audience etc, but they also set out some other very good thoughts that will take your presentations to the next level.  Well work a look.

LG Optimus Quest 2

Following on from the hugely successful Optimus Quest competition, we now have the inevitable sequel. I’ve got two brand new LG Optimus 7 devices up for grabs. This is a really good Windows Phone with 16G of internal memory, a lovely screen and a nice metal body.

This time the competition is different. All you have to do is send me your download stats from Windows Phone Marketplace and at the end of July and the end of August I’ll give a brand new LG Optimus 7 Windows Phone to the Hull Student with the most downloads. I’ll be checking the numbers with Microsoft, so no photoshopped graphs or tampered screenshots please .

Note that this is open to Hull Students only, and not those who have just graduated (sorry Harry). If you have applied to join us in September, you are eligible to enter too, as long as we have your details on file in our admissions system. 

Just email me your entries at optimusQuest2@robmiles.com before the end of July and I’ll send you a phone if you are the best. Then we do the whole thing again in August.

Some tips to optimise your Marketplace stats:

1. Always give a trial mode. If you are selling your game, make it a free download with a trial mode so that users can get an idea of what it is like for free.
2. Release updates. Don’t finish all the levels and then put the game out there. This means you will be late to market. Instead you can release level 1 in trial mode and then add features and functions as you go along. Harry Overs is doing this very successfully with Destruction Golf, which is picking up quite a following on the Marketplace. Bottled Games and Rusty Spoons also deserve a mention here too, as they have applications out there which are chugging along nicely.
3. Take trouble over your icon and description. Don’t do these the night before you submit. These are your “shop window” and the better they look and the more enticing the text the more chance you have of catching the eye of a customer.
4. Move your game around the Marketplace. If you are not sure which category your game fits into, move it into different ones (within reason) then you can find the one where it attracts the most attention.

Don’t worry if you only get a few downloads, send me your entry anyway. If everyone else forgets to enter you might sneak in and win the prize. Oh, and sign up for rewards at http://www.my-rewards.com. That way you will win something whatever happens. And enter the Windows Phone competition at the Microsoft UK Student Blog.

Update on Friday, June 10, 2011 at 03:21PM by Rob

A little clarification here; the figures must be for a single Windows Phone app or game that you have placed in the Marketplace. What I want to see is the total number of downloads from Marketplace. It makes no difference whether it is free or paid, or paid with a free trial. You can't win twice, once you have one phone that's it.

Never Apologise in Advance

Over the years I’ve watched loads of presentations all over the place from students, professionals and even once, by mistake, from me on Channel 9. And one thing that has struck me is that there is one thing you must never, ever, do in front of an audience. And that is apologise in advance. If you say at the start of your talk “I’m sorry, but because I’ve not had time to prepare/got drunk last night/just ended an unhappy love affair (delete where applicable) this is is not going to be as good as it might be” then your audience is instantly expecting you to fail, and they will set their expectations appropriately.

Now this goes against a certain aspect of “Britishness” which is that we from the UK should at all times to be slightly self-effacing and modest. If a Brit tells you that something they have done is “quite good” then be prepared for something truly amazing. But you would never anyone from the ‘states saying that something is quite good. In America things start at “awesome” and then go up from there.

I’m not saying that you should attempt to deceive your audience, or that you shouldn’t apologise if something stops you from doing a good job during the presentation. What I’m saying is that you should not set the wrong expectations at the start. I’ve seen some superb talks from people who have come off the stage and told me how badly they thought it went. I’ve also done what I thought were barnstorming presentations to get a decidedly ho-hum reaction from the audience.

If you are not sure about something, say so during the presentation not at the start. If you put a downer on things right at the beginning you are not actually doing yourself any kind of favour.

Man Made Shed

This is not my shed, this is the showroom model. Mine looks similar, but with somewhat more tatty tools.

I’m spending a few days not on the computer. I’m either marking exam scripts or doing manly DIY type activities. Yesterday I failed to mend one thing (although I did also replace some broken pipe somewhere else, ending the day with a win on points).

Today I built a little baby shed which we are going to use to store all the gardening implements that I never use. I then bolted it to the floor and the wall. It has been a bit breezy lately and so I really don’t want it to fly away. If you have need for a tiny shed that is easy to make you could do worse. You can get it from B&Q here. It even has 13 reviews, 11 positive. I suppose it will shortly have its own Facebook page.

I Hate Plumbing

This is a picture of a cactus. You wouldn’t want a picture of anything else…

I don’t mind wiring things up. I know where I am with electricity. It tends to stay in the cable and not squirt out of joints at each end. Unlike water. The water pipe going into the toilet cistern has been leaking slightly and so I thought I’d improve on Fix #1 (a bowl underneath to catch the drips) with Fix #2, tightening the compression joint. (you just know this is going to end badly, don’t you).

Anyhoo, I attached my one good adjustable spanner (all the rest seem to have vanished) and gave the joint a twirl. This had the effect of twizzling the whole fitting round and shearing off part of the ball cock inside the cistern. This was extra annoying because I’d tried to use my other adjustable spanner (the bad one) to hold that part still and the spanner had just broken. So now whenever the toilet fills up after a flush I also get a four foot high jet of water into the air. Not good. So it was off down to the DIY store to get a replacement fitting. Which of course wouldn’t fit. In the end, by dint of a lot swearing and removal of skin from various knuckles I’m pretty much back where I started, with a bowl collecting the drips. I can’t replace the faulty part with a new one because all the new ones are the wrong size.

I think it might be new toilet time.